118 Now, DASA 2019-2 a more serious finding in the Marshallese was that over the years the children, particularly the boys exposed at less than 12 years of age, have tended to be somewhat stunted in growth, have shown some lag in growth and development (Reference 16). We have carried out numerous growth measurements and x-rays for bone growth, and so forth, and this finding has become apparent. Figure 15 shows a comparison of bone age in some of the males. The dotted line represents the exposed males compared with the unexposed males on the left, and on the rigiut the females. The base ' line represents the American standard. The Marshallese tend to he somewhat smaller than American standards. Shortly, I'll have a little more to say about this lag in growth in the Rongetap children. We have carried out blood work every year, of course, and Figure 16 shows that there's been a slight lag in complete recovery of the white count and platelet count up until about ll years after exposure. The straight line represents the unexposed control population. We have carried out numerous aging studies to see if we could detect any premature aging effects and we haven't seen anything along that line. Life shortening has not heen apparent in these people from this limited study. Fertility based on birth rate has shown that about the same birth rate has existed in the exposed population as compared with the unexposed population. They've had about 70 babies and these babies on the whole appear normal. We haven't seen any greater incidence in the congenital defects in the babies of the Rongelap exposed 1s cum- pared with the unexposed. ' Whether there was an early sterility or not, we do not know. We did not test it, af course. It probably did occur during the early ‘ period. The Japanese fishermen showed quite a dropin sperm count which lasted for three years, but since that time they've had chilaren repeatedly and recovered their sperm ccunt. During the first four years the exposed women showed some increase in miscarriages and stillbirths. About 41 percent of the births during that period ended in nonviable babies compared with only 16 percent in the unexposed group.